Vagabonding

I awoke the next morning to a group of no less than a dozen German tourists milling about my "bedroom."  I had my computer open and I was sleeping sitting up so as to not make it look like I was intentionally sleeping there, and that I actually belonged there.  I even took a nice hot shower that morning as I had done the previous night there.   I gathered my things, walked to the Welcome Center, where I took a shuttle back to the Park Entrance.  There, I caught I bus back to Puerto Natales.   My plan for the foreseeable future was to pop on over to Argentinian Patagonia, and in particular Calafate, and then after a few days there, somehow make it to the Marble Caves in Chile Chico, and then back up to the Lake District for a week.  Now, transportation in Patagonia is not as easy as the rest of Chile, so I would have either had to rent a car or hitchhike (which is actually quite common Chile).  But I was stressing a bit, because I do ...

The next morning I awoke to  the sounds of chirping birds.  This day was supposed to be an easy one as I only had to hike 5 hours back to where I had started to complete the circuit. So I slept in past nine, only to arise from my tent to see a gorgeous day with blue sky--not just a sliver of blue sky.  The whole sky was blue.  I immediately regretted my decision to sleep in.  The thought of re-doing Mirador Las Torres, which was implanted deep in the back of my mind since the beginning of my trek, quickly made its way to the forefront of my mind.  Mother Nature had thrown me another bone, and this was a big one, which I was going to take full advantage of.  I was going to attempt to hike back up Mirador Las Torres, which would add a solid 8 hours to my original 5-hour hike back to the starting point.  I also wanted to get up to Mirador Las Torres as quickly as I could just in case the weather did turn bad.   So my easy hike...

The next day I was to hike up to a peak (Mirador de los Cuernos), and then hike back down to my next stay (Camp Frances).  This would not be such an easy hike as there was quite a bit of elevation change, but still a piece of cake compared to what I had gone through hiking from Los Perros to Grey, even though the elevation change was greater for this leg of the trek (from 0 feet to over 3000 feet).  Also, I would be able to drop off my full backpack at Camp Italiano at the base before hiking to the peak.  I only needed my day pack, which included some snacks, a sweat shirt, and of course my computer (I did not want to leave it behind unattended). Even though there was some blue over Lake Pehoe . . . . . . what I was going to hike into looked a bit ominous, similar to when I hiked up to Mirador del Torres . . . about a half mile into my hike, I noticed that I had forgotten my water bottle back at the lodge.  But that does not prese...